do any of them support shifting this until after the desktop is up? - pretty sure they all suck at this
how much _really_ needs to be done before X? - turns out not much if you don't believe in using "runlevels" and don't need to be multiuser

here is an example where I use jwm's <StartupCommand> to finish the init process inside rxvt after jumping into Xvesa with rox and jwm

Code:

/* Copyright 2011 Brad Conroy. Released to the Public Domain or
redistributable under any OSI approved license, or
any license meeting the OSI definition of open source
*/
#include <unistd.h> /* for exec */
#include <sys/mount.h> /* for mount */
#include <stdlib.h> /* for putenv */

/* these could be functions but gcc complains less this way */
#define EGGSACK(a) ({if((fork())==0) execvp(a[0],a);})

After somehow two years i bought a Linux magazine with several 700MB live distros like xubuntu,mint,grml and was not impressed at all . Could not work with their network-manager's and was not able to mount anything .

I'm sure I don't know what you guys are talking about, but here's my two cents worth anyway :

One of the most annoying things about Windows to me is that when it boots, it appears to be ready to do something before it has really finished booting. Why Microsoft thinks that's a good idea, I don't know. Maybe they think people expect it to have to warm up for a while after the desktop shows up. I want the computer to be fully booted and ready to go the instant the desktop pops onto the screen. Until then, show the boot messages or a progress bar or something.

Init, Upstart and Systemd are responsible for the boot sequence and the therefor needed services to start.

- Init was the first ever used in linux (as far as i know)
- Upstart was the progression of Init
- Systemd is not a progression of Upstart - it is a new generation

Sytemd is now used f.e. in Fedora 15 Lovelock using the gnome 3 desktop

The new thing on Systemd is that all services are started simultaneously and then they are buffered. This way a service doesn't have to wait if it is dependent on other services._________________LazY PuppyRSH's DNASARA B.

In c this is done with fork exec wait (my example uses fork and exec, but I figured out a way to eliminate the delayed wait, so no example of that yet)_________________Web Programming - Pet Packaging 100 & 101

Personally, I'm not impressed with systemd. I like the BusyBox init, it's simple and doesn't do anything fancy.

When I want to start daemons in the background, I just make the init script fork before it executes them, so they start in parallel with X or whatever it is. I get the performance systemd gives, without having to learn something new or write new init scripts._________________My homepageMy GitHub profile

I've been using arch lately, which is going over to systemd. There are a couple of things here.

1) Makes for a zippy boot. My arch boots way faster than Puppy ever did, on the same machine. However arch booted faster than Puppy with the old sysv init, but now it is going even faster. I spend the most time typing in my lengthy encryption password. There are lots of ways to play with systemd in native mode getting it even faster (systemd is initially set up as a sort of compatibility mode with sysv to ease the transition, but one doesn't harvest much of the speed increases until going over to native mode). The reason Puppy boots so slow is heavy use of shell scripts, according to the systemd author (he didn't mention Puppy directly but just said shell scripts really suck for speed).

(OK, I just realized that Puppy is booting off a (fast) USB flash drive while arch is booting off my SATA SSD drive, so that might have something to do with it, heh...)

2) systemd also goes in the direction of standardization of linux. Every distro used to have its own flavor of doing essentially the same thing, but that will be simplified and streamlined with systemd.

I'm hardly a developer or a geek, but I managed to figure it out pretty well so far. I think it would be worth looking at, integrating it into woof. Puppy runs like a rocket ship, it should boot like one too.

I noticed some early concerns about services not being available (ie, daemons not running) until called, such as when using servers (SSH, apache, etc.), although I'm guessing this has since been worked out if distros such as Fedora have adopted it.

so puppy uses busybox init, I was wondering about this. I'm still confused as to what exactly Puppy does on start up. Is there information that explains this step by step?_________________helping Wiki for help | IF SendSpace link = "dead" THEN PM me ("up file to http://meownplanet.net/")

I have to say I can see his point (although I am far from being a dev). While I like systemd in arch for fast boot times, my logs are full of errors including failure to umount /var on every shutdown. How to fix them? How the hell do I know?! I am reduced to begging help on the arch newbie board and not getting much luck with that. Systemd is well documented and yet I still don't have the big picture, or the ability to debug these issues. Maybe the answer is that multiple hiccups on shutdown are normal and I should stop worrying about them. Just like Windows.